


Talking is Hard

by meimentomori



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Asexual Pidge | Katie Holt, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Coming Out, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Gay Keith (Voltron), Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Lesbian Allura (Voltron), M/M, Pansexual Hunk (Voltron), Pining Lance (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 11:11:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15242088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meimentomori/pseuds/meimentomori
Summary: “So you’re saying that I should just come out?”Or, in which Hunk and Pidge decide to give Lance advice on coming out, only it doesn't go exactly as planned.





	Talking is Hard

When Lance opened his curtains that morning to the first hint of a sunrise, he didn’t immediately shut them again.

Instead he stared at the horizon for a few moments, mesmerized by how slowly the sky began to change. This morning the sunrise had red as its dominant color. Lance couldn’t help but smile at how it began to push the darkness of nighttime away. It might’ve been silly for him on any other day to get so excited about the sunrise. But it was a distraction, something to postpone him inevitably having to check his phone and read the responses to his coming out text to his family’s group chat. What possessed him to do it, he had no idea. It wasn’t like there was anything special about today. If anything, it was one of the more colorless ones of his life. There seemed to be people and places that flashed by him in all sorts of different colors, that kept his life from dulling. He might’ve thought that their reactions would bring some of these back, add something new to this boring day.

Maybe it was the threat of some of these colors being ugly, ones that would burn his eyes with their harshness, that kept him from sitting down on his bed and reading through their messages. He stayed by the window for a while, trying to focus on the serenity of the early morning. Hardly anybody was on campus right now. Lance had woken up long before his alarm, which gave his mind enough time to come up with countless worse case scenarios. His mom would never let him come home for Christmas again. His sister would call him, try to set him out with one of her friend’s sisters. His grandmother would disown him entirely, spitting out all sorts of curses and slurs in his direction. The mere thought of it made his breath hitch in his chest. Tears began to well up at the edges of his eyes, but he wouldn’t let them spill out.

Lance didn’t think that he should’ve been ashamed of his sexuality yet, he still wished that the night had stayed. That he could ignore the fact that the sun would rise, giving light to all of the possibilities that couldn’t worm their way into his mind, as long as sleep had him in its gentle arms. However, the sun rising was inevitable. The one thing that Lance couldn’t push back, no matter how slow it seemed to creep its way up into the sky. None of his family would be able to ignore the confirmation of the suspicion they’d already had built up in their minds. Lance talked about girls more often than he did boys. There were a few that he’d thrown in there, which put him on their radar no doubt, but after talking about it with Pidge and Hunk yesterday for him to realize that it was probably a layer of defense so that they didn’t find out the truth.

“I used to wear dresses all of the time to trick my parents into thinking that I was fine with being feminine.” Pidge had admitted between bites of pizza, wiping the grease off of their face with the back of their hand. “I’d even wear headbands with flowers and all of that shit.”

Lance couldn’t help but chuckle at this. “Pidge? Our ‘I’d rather die than wear a skirt ever again’ Pidge?”

“Like I said, dark times.” Pidge shook their head, shuddering a little. “I was unhappy practically the entire time I acted like that. It threw me into a pretty bad place mentally, if I’m being honest. But we all do that stuff to cover who we believe ourselves to be because we’re scared of rejection. That our honesty will only be met with denial or hate or some other shit like that.”

Lance chewed on his straw, thinking on it for a moment. It almost seemed like human nature to do that. A fight or flight response, made especially for sexuality and gender. Why did both of them have to be so controversial? Life was too short for their to be such ignorance and hatred in the world about topics like that. They should’ve been talked about at every possible chance and embraced as something normal. All of Lance’s friends had their own stories to tell about struggles they faced in those regards. Pidge, who was genderfluid and asexual. Hunk, possibly the purest pansexual out there. Even Allura, who was currently out on a date with her girlfriend, was a lesbian. They’d made bets with each other behind Lance’s back when he would tell them. But family was more important to Lance, and losing them scared him more than anything.

“So you’re saying that I should just come out?”

“I’m not saying that at all.” Pidge looked to Hunk, then back to Lance, like their eyes could do all of the talking. “A little back up here, Hunk?”

“It’s better now while you’re in college than never.” Hunk said as he finished off his first slice of pizza, reaching into the box to grab another. They only ever ordered cheese, since their tastes in toppings were too different to ever decide on just one. “You’re going to be living in these dorms for the next few years so it’s not like you’ll have to face them right away, except when you go home.” Hunk noticed the way Lance’s gaze fell to his own slice of pizza, picking at the crust. “There’s always room at my place if they kick you out.”

Lance’s eyes lit up at this gesture, jaw dropping slightly. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely!” Hunk replied with a smile on his face. “My mom would love to have another son to dote on.” He paused for a moment, before remembering something. “Oh, and don’t mind my sisters. They’re both in high school and having a hot boy in their proximity is something that hardly ever goes well.”

“Tell me about it.” Lance groaned, knowing the pain of having to contain that excitement so as to not scare random boys off all too well.

Pidge rolled their eyes. “Sounds like you’d get along just fine.”

Lance normally would’ve laughed at a comment like this, but there was something else he wanted to ask that outweighed any sort of lightness that his friends in front of him were trying to bring to the table. It sounded like a stupid question to ask, the more he repeated it in his head. Allura would’ve been a better fit to talk to about something like this. He’d had a crush on her when they’d first met, which he promptly confessed to and was rejected when she told him he was dating Romelle. Lance had to admit he’d been jealous when he saw how happy they were together. He’d been dying to have someone to do all of the romantic fantasies he’d thought up in his high school days with someone (which was why he’d practically failed out of all of his classes). But the bond between the two of them was different than the bond Lance had with Hunk and Pidge. Allura encouraged him to be open about all of this, to come to her when he needed anything. 

The two friends who sat with him now felt like nothing more than classmates he paired up with after being brushed aside by everyone else compare to her.

He finally decided to bite the bullet, knowing that whatever advice they gave him would at least be sufficient enough to give him a place to start. “How did you do it?”

Hunk practically choked on his pizza, which was only made worse by Pidge spitting out some of their soda. It started to dribble down their chin and onto their alien t-shirt. Lance looked around to see if he could find any napkins but they had already gotten up to get some from by the soda machine before he could beat them to it. Lance could feel the apologizes building themselves up in his mind, itching at his vocal chords to pass his lips. He can’t even begin to form the words before Pidge puts a hand up in front of them, shaking their head like they know exactly what he’s going to say. Lance respected their wishes and stayed silent, noticing how awkward Hunk seemed to feel in this situation. Coming out wasn’t an easy thing to talk about by any means. Let alone, at a public place like a pizza parlor. But the two of them had seemed to comfortable up until this point that he felt like it shouldn’t have been too off limits.

Clearly he had been wrong.

“You seriously haven’t spent hours on YouTube, looking up coming out videos? Scrolling through the comments to try and find that one story that speaks to you?” Pidge sounded genuinely surprised, unlike the awkwardness he’d been expecting.

“No?” Lance raised his eyebrows, still too stunned to believe it. “Is that what you did?”

“That’s practically what everyone does!” Pidge nearly shouted, slamming their hands on the table as they stood up slightly in their booth. “Sorry. It’s just…”

“Just what?” 

Pidge paused for a moment, biting their lip as if what they were about to say would change the course of their friendship forever. “How did you know that you were bisexual?”

Lance could recall the day like it had been yesterday. Ever since fourth grade, he’d started to vaguely notice it. Little things here and there that he couldn’t quite make sense of. Following around a boy wherever he went, doing borderline dangerous things just so they would clap him on the back and tell him how awesome it was. No matter the damage he took to himself, Lance felt like this outweighed all of it. There had been days where all he did in class was stare at the back of a boy’s head. He’d wonder what it would feel like to get close to a boy, close enough to be able to feel the silkiness of their hair between his fingertips. Seventh grade had been the year that finally sealed the deal. The night that it had happened, Lance remembered more vividly than any other. It hadn’t ended the greatest, but it at least made him come to terms with who he truly was. Which cancelled out all of the negatives, in his eyes.

“It was at a sleepover when I was twelve or something.” Lance began, holding onto his paper cup for support. “I forgot my sleeping bag and the guy who was hosting it, Zack, offered to let me sleep on the couch with him.”

“If this boy ended up being a heterosexual, I’m officially done with everything that the straights are allowed to do without it being considered weird.” Pidge looked like they were about to find this boy and beat him up if that proved to be the case.

One side of Lance’s mouth rose up. “I hope he didn’t. We ended up not talking much after seventh grade, so all I know is that, somehow, he ended up wrapping his arms around me while he was sleeping and I kinda thought, ‘Hey. It wouldn’t be so bad to do this with him more often.’ And that’s when it finally clicked in my head, I guess.”

“Awww.” Hunk cooed, setting Lance’s cheeks ablaze. “That’s adorable, Lance.”

“Doesn’t help me come out to my parents to remember it, though.” Lance grumbled, glancing around at all of the other groups of friends who were chatting away with each other.

“I’d text them.” Pidge said honestly. “In your case, there’s not much to explain. So it’ll be a lot easier than doing what I did. Turns out, asking your parents for a binder isn’t exactly the clearest thing in the world when it’s the middle of summer. Took me hours to finally get them to understand that I didn’t want a fucking set of rings to hold paper.”

“Doesn’t your family have that giant group chat or something?” Hunk suggested. “You could get the message out to all of them, and you won’t have to contact them individually.”

“One and done, huh?” Lance let the thought of it carry over into the rest of the evening, typing out bits and pieces in the notes on his phone occasionally before he found exactly what he wanted to say.

It wasn’t too long. Nothing that would confuse them to the point of where they couldn’t understand it but enough that it got his point across. Lance didn’t want to make it seem like this was an easy thing for him to do. It hadn’t been, by any means. He would’ve been looking at his phone by now if it had. Lance ran his hands through his hair, pacing back and forth in front of his dorm window. His phone was waiting for him just a few feet away. He could go and grab it if he really wanted to and put himself at the mercy of what he was anticipating to be a lot of friction between him and his family. He tugged at his brown locks harder the more he recalled what he’d written in his text. It was cheesy and pathetic, just like everything else that Lance did when it came to love. Though a love confession felt more heartfelt, like there was a real sense of energy and vitality put into it. All that this was, was a confession, period. 

His phone finally started to vibrate with his alarm, bouncing to life as Lance ran over to silence it.  
There were only three notifications for texts that he could see from his family’s group chat. He could feel his heart rate spike at the sheer lack of them. Surely if his family were supportive, they would be showering him with love and support, right? To be fair to them, Lance figured, he’d sent it fairly late at night. Nearly one in the morning. How his body still had enough energy left to make him as anxious as he was right then seemed like it deserved an award. He braced himself, closing his eyes as he clicked on one of the notifications, letting the conversation flood onto the screen. When he opened them, he felt his heart sink. All of their responses were lifeless. His mother had said that she was thankful he told her, his dad replying with an arrow pointing to her message above. All that Veronica had sent was a set of rainbow hearts. His brothers hadn’t said a word, nor had any of his extended family. 

He’d fucked up big time.

His hands were fumbling to find his contacts before he could even command them to, dialing up the only person he knew that would be awake. After a few rings, the line was silent. “Pidge?”

“Lance?” They yawned in response, making him yawn all the way from the other end. “What’re you doing up so early?”

They took a moment to collect their thoughts, realizing with a sighed ‘ah’ what had happened. “They didn’t take the news well, I’m guessing?”

“That’s not it exactly…” Lance’s voice trailed off. 

“Oh.” He could practically hear them nodding into their phone. “So not much of a reaction at all, then?”

“Nothing.” Lance said, keeping them on the line as he texted over a screenshot of the groupchat. 

Silence fell between the two of them as he waited for Pidge to analyze the situation. If there was anyone that Lance knew who could make sense out of this mess and tell him what his next move should be, it was them. That was the one benefit of being their friend. You hardly ever had to explain anything to Pidge, they would just figure it out on their own. Lance found himself flopping down onto his bed, hitting the speaker button on his phone so he could throw it beside him. He pulled his blanket that laid haphazardly at the foot of it up and over himself. Would it be okay if he skipped his classes today and stayed right where he was? Wallowing in his own regrets, hiding his phone underneath his clothes in his dresser as soon as he hung up on the phone with Pidge? He could hear them thinking, tapping their finger on a table or another hard object as they did.

“This doesn’t look good.” They said eventually.

“No shit, it doesn’t.” Lance pressed his face further into the sheets, groaning so loud that tears he didn’t even know were in his eyes came spilling out. Great, he thought, right after I just washed them, too. “Most of them didn’t even respond, which either means that they hate me or they don’t want to deal with me right now.”  
Pidge thought to themselves for a moment. Lance didn’t know what to make of it, now that he had an outside perspective to confirm just how screwed he was. There was still a part of him that was proud of what he did. He hadn’t noticed it at first, through the shock of the lukewarm replies and anxiety of what they now thought of him truly, but it seemed to have grown bigger after seeing the aftermath. It wasn’t like anyone had disowned him. They weren’t vocal about it even if they had, which meant that they would, at most, ignore him at family parties and such. Lance could get used to that eventually, he thought. It would sting at first, a whole lot more than ripping off a bandaid, but every wound had to heal someday. What he couldn’t deny was right now, how horrible it felt to have such a robotic response from such an excitable family. There should’ve been loads more support, dozens of messages congratulating him.

But, for the most part, there was only silence.

“Fuck them.”

The way that they said it made Lance burst out laughing. “What?”

“Look, I have to work on the finishing touches for a project I’m turning in, but we’re taking you out tonight.” Pidge said, their phone clearly on speaker as they started stuffing supplies into their bag. “And you can’t say no. I’m not letting you cry yourself to sleep again like you did after Nyma rejected you.”

“Hey!” Lance sat up defensively, throwing the blanket off so it fell onto the floor. More laundry for him to worry about another time. “You were the one who told me to go for it, remember?” When all that he got was laughter, he said. “Where are you even taking me?”

“It’ll be a surprise.” Pidge said, rushing to get off of the call. “Just wait at your dorm after classes and we’ll come and get you once everyone’s done for the day, alright? Text you later!”

The line went dead before Lance could even say goodbye.

While he appreciated that Pidge was trying to cheer him up, offering to go out when he knew well that their courses required far more work than his own did, he didn’t feel too appreciative. Going to class required him to think. Thinking would lead Lance back down on the path to overcomplicating how his family’s dynamic with him would shift, leading to an inevitable breakdown that he, for one, wasn’t in the mood to have at school. But he knew better than to skip by now, especially with Pidge breathing down his neck if he wasn’t there for English. It was his weakest subject and they knew this. They’d tried to help him study, to at least get a passing grade like they did, but it’d only seemed to make it worse. Lance tried to weigh the pros and cons of each, deciding that having a friend in each of his classes would make the day bearable. 

Enough so that he stood up and headed to the bathroom, turning up his music as he got into the shower to get ready for the day.

\--------------------------  
It was much easier than Lance had been expecting to get through the day.

Classes went by like a blur, thanks to all of the energy he’d burned off last night into the morning turning him into nothing more than a groggy mess. His friends were helpful in keeping him awake, to the best of their ability. Hunk poked him gently every time he started dozing off. Allura and Romelle would block him off from their professor’s sight by whispering in front of him when his eyes shut, one of them taking their free hand that they weren’t using to shield their conversation and shaking him awake. Pidge even went so far as to bring in one of their energy drinks for him to chug. English was his last class, which didn’t make much sense at first to him, but then he remembered that he had plans for tonight. What he had planned on being a colorless day turned into the exact opposite of that. For better or worse, he couldn’t quite tell. 

His second wind kicked in by the time that their English professor let them out of the day. Pidge waved him off as they hurried to the cafeteria, eager to grab a bite to eat before their last class of the day. As Lance hadn’t settled on a major yet, he had much less time in classes than his friends did. While they were studying hard to achieve their dreams when it came to their career, he had no clue what he wanted to do. All that college had led him to figure out was that he might not have been cut out for such a rigorous structure of classes. Lance hardly ever knew what to study, or what he should be doing to prepare for a test. It had been a blessing to make the friends that he had in each of his classes so that he could ask them what the biggest points were in their lessons that he should focus on but he knew that eventually, he’d be on his own. 

That was what terrified him the most about all of it. Lance had always been surrounded by people who loved him, with his family or his friends from school. He was never one of the popular kids but he wasn’t widely hated by everyone either. He was somewhere in the middle and he was content with that, except when it came to noticing girls or boys who were entirely out of his league. While it was easier for him to flirt with girls, he couldn’t deny that rejection of either kind got to him in a way that no one seemed to notice. It ate at his heart from the inside, ripping it apart into shreds that he learned to let heal on their own. Heartache was such a common feeling for Lance that sometimes he forgot what it was like to be in love. To be surrounded by people who loved him and appreciate them for everything they did for him.

Maybe it was the only thing keeping him from falling apart so he couldn’t appreciate it.

When Lance finally got back to his dorm, he checked his phone to see if anyone else had bothered to respond. The only new message in the groupchat was his mother asking his siblings if they were going to be home for dinner. He threw his phone down next to his laptop, pressing his head down onto the keyboard of his laptop. He didn’t even care to move it, even after all of the different types of warning sounds blaring out of its speakers. Were things always going to be like this when he saw them talking? Whenever someone mentioned him, would the entire chat go dead until someone changed the subject? He didn’t want to think about if they would but he couldn’t help up. These had been the people who’d raised him. The ones who’d been there to watch him grow up from a babbling toddler to a fully grown man. Family had always meant the most to Lance. More than love, more than money, more than following his dreams.

Looked like he’d have to find a way to live without it, somehow.

Lance lifted his head up, looking at his screen. There were dozens of windows that’d popped up on his screen, warning him of various things that his face had enacted when he rested it down that he didn’t even know existed. Once he exited out of them all, he decided that he had to find something to distract himself. Spotify was usually the biggest help for that. Lance had found this blog on Tumblr that made some of the best playlists he’d ever heard, created in such a unique way that it had been almost impossible for him to click on them when he’d first discovered it. The only thing the creator labelled them with would be a single word, but the depth and effort that went into crafting such a perfect selection of songs was something that Lance never failed to be amazed by. Every melody, every lyric, every note, complimented each other to create something that felt like it defined whatever word it was better than the dictionary could. He clicked onto his favorite and turned it on, sliding the volume to the right as he let himself get lost in it.

Defiance.

Lance had listened to it so many times now, he’d even looked into all of the artists who created every song. He didn’t end up liking too many of them but, somehow, this blogger had discovered the best of the best from them. What he loved about it most was that it wasn’t defiance in the edgy way that Lance associated with My Chemical Romance and bands like that. It didn’t scream ‘Fuck the world!’ with hard rock riffs playing behind it. This was defiance in the way that felt like letting go. Breaking free of those chains that had been placed on you at birth to be exactly what the world wanted you to be, proving those who’d placed them upon you wrong. Lance found himself getting lost in it, as he tended to do. He shut his eyes and drummed his fingers on his desk. He wouldn’t admit it outloud but, sometimes he thought that whoever made these playlists understood him. Like they had a connection to each other without ever having spoken.

The owner of the blog had said once that talking was hard for him. Creating playlists was his one way to communicate with the world, to tell it how he was feeling and who he was without having to say a single thing. Lance thought that there was something cute about that. A boy, somewhere, saying all that he had to say to thousands of people through the words of others. Lance couldn’t deny that he wished that it was easier for him to talk to people. That they might be able to strike up a conversation every now and then, a relationship that had the potential to eventually evolve into something more. It was a dream that he hadn’t told anyone that he knew. It seemed too romantic and childish for anyone to understand, a dream that Lance most likely shared with dozens of other people. But that didn’t stop him from messaging him with whatever was on his mind, getting it off of his chest to someone who would never speak back.

Yet he trusted him more than anyone.

Lance clicked on a new tab and typed in the url to his playlist boy’s Tumblr that he had memorized by heart. ‘theboywhospeaksthroughsong.tumblr.com’. He clicked on the upper right hand message bubble and started typing in something before he could give it more thought. There was no telling if this boy would understand. He might not have even had to struggle with his sexuality throughout his life. For all anyone knew, he could’ve been ragingly homophobic in real life, with adoring fans online who hadn’t a single clue. But in that moment, Lance decided to believe that he wasn’t. He chose to believe that he would be supportive of whoever no matter what, that he struggled with something similar himself. That there was more to him than met the eye, secrets that he would never breathe a word about to another soul. The clicking of his keys alongside the melody of the song gave Lance more words to say about this than he’d ever breathed to a soul. Thoughts from days past that came back to him with striking clarity.

It was as soon as he hit send that someone began pounding on the door.

In a panic, Lance shut the top of his laptop down, shoving his phone before pulling the door open with as wide of a grin as he could muster. It was easy for him to fool people into thinking he was happier than he was. Those who weren’t as close to him as his friends had grown to be, that was. They saw right through it. He tried to usher them inside and ignore it, but the moment he looked at Hunk and how his eyes were filled with nothing but understanding, he realized that his facade wasn’t thick enough. It might’ve been a piece of plastic wrap at this point, for how transparent it was. He pulled Lance into a hug, while Pidge, Romelle, and Allura wrapped their arms around his and him. It wasn’t long after they let him out of their grasp that he noticed two strangers standing just behind them. Both boys, one who looked older with a tuft of white hair that faded into black and one younger, with a mullet and violet eyes focused intensely on the floor.

“Hi!” The older one stepped forward, holding out a hand for Lance to shake. He took it, looking behind him at his friends for an explanation. Allura mouthed a ‘Be nice’ to him as he did. So he was one of her friends. “I’m Shiro. I hope you don’t mind us tagging along tonight.” He pushed the younger boy forward, who looked up at Lance reluctantly. “My little brother Keith here hardly ever goes out, so I thought it’d be a nice change of pace for him.”

Keith turned to glare at Shiro. “I go out all the time!”

“Walking to Seven Eleven at two in the morning to get a slurpee isn’t exactly ‘going out’.”

Lance couldn’t help but chuckle at this while Keith argued with him a little more. “Well, you're going out with me tonight.” He went and locked the door to his dorm quickly, noticing all of the conspiratorial glances between the rest of his friends. He raised an eyebrow at them before he went and joined Keith by his side again, only to have them shrug in response. They must’ve been trying to set him up, but Lance didn’t really care right then. “And if anyone here can make sure you have a good time, it’s me.”

Keith stopped arguing with Shiro and turned to face Lance. The expression on his face he couldn’t read, but it seemed to be a mix of confusion and wonder all at once. Lance smiled at him, his first genuine smile of the day, causing Keith to turn away. The brunette swore that he could see a flush of red cross his cheeks but he decided to let it slide. The last thing he wanted was to tease Keith too much to the point of scaring him off. The two of them fell behind the rest of the group as they walked. Lance didn’t bother to listen to them as they did, taking it upon himself to stay with Keith. It wasn’t because he was meant to be his date. Lance wasn’t even thinking about making a move on him in the slightest. Why he wanted to stay with him was because he knew what it was like to be alone. He knew how uncomfortable it could be to be thrown into a group of friends that you knew nothing about, struggling to find anything to say to them. If all they did was stay by each other, that would be fine by Lance.

As long as neither of them were alone.

“You can go up there with them, if you want.” Keith said once they were outside, walking off of campus into the town that laid just beyond. “I don’t wanna bother you any.”

Lance tilted his head at this. “Why would you be bothering me any?”

“Because this is your night, and all I’m doing is saying nothing to you while they’re all having a fucking blast up there.” Keith said, gesturing up to Lance’s crowd of friends at the front.

Shiro fit in seamlessly among them, as he’d expected. Allura had a habit of attracting some of the coolest people Lance had ever met to her, introducing them to him like it was nothing. That was how he’d met Nyma, and promptly failed at any sort of a romantic relationship with her as he laid on the flirty jokes far too thick. He’d thought that she’d liked them at the time, with the way her laugh filled their air like helium filled balloons and her eyes sparkled like gemstones. Turned out, all that she had wanted from him was someone to make her ex-boyfriend jealous, who’d she’d gotten back together with the day that Lance had confessed to her. Even though it’d only been a month or two ago, he still couldn’t let go of what she’d said about him needing to learn to take things slow. There was one person who came to mind when he thought of this, though he hadn’t even taken it slow with him. Maybe he could try it with Keith, just to see how it worked.

“You know...” Lance pulled out his phone, pulling up the playlist he’d been listening to earlier. Keith’s eyes focused on the horizon beside him as he did, all of the colors of the sunset reflected in them as he stared. Lance held out one of his earbuds for Keith to take. He looked at him for a moment before Lance nodded, like he needed confirmation that it was alright for him to take. “It’s easier to share music with one person, rather than the whole group.” Lance pressed play as he showed the phone screen to Keith, who’s eyes lit up instantly. “Someone I follow on Tumblr I know makes playlists. I was listening to this one just before you all came and got me.”

“So that’s why I heard Walk the Moon earlier!” Keith was so excited that he nearly shouted it, toning it down when the rest of the group shot a glance back at him and chuckled. “Sorry. They’re just one of my favorite bands, is all.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes, really.” Keith rolled his eyes, brushing a piece of hair out of his face. “I’ve been listening to them since my sophomore year of high school.”

“I’ve only ever heard them on these playlists, but they’re really good, from what I can tell!” Lance laughed, able to finally push all of his worries out of the way. It didn’t matter to him where they were going, now that he had someone who was just as excited about something as simple as music to talk with. “It is kind of weird that this song is on here, though.”

“Boyfriend’s one of my favorites.” Keith admitted sheepishly. So his suspicions about him had been right, Lance thought. There was a pause where he thought that he’d lost Keith’s attention, that they wouldn’t talk about anything the rest of the night, when he started up again. His voice was a lot quieter this time. “Shiro told me what happened with your family and I wanted to say I’m sorry. I know how rough that can be.”

“Oh.” Lance replied, now focused on the sidewalk beneath his feet. “It’s fine. I’ll get over it, eventually. Just another shitty thing to happen, you know?”

“I totally get it.” Keith looked up at the sky, at all the stars that had risen while they were walking. How many of them were still out there, Lance wondered, versus the last remnants of the dying light of stars that had been gones for ages? “My advice, though, would be to give them time. Sometimes the shock of it all is too much for them to process and they say things at first that they didn’t mean to, because they don’t know what to say. It doesn’t mean that they love you any less.”

“Sounds like you have some experience with this stuff.” 

Keith’s lips curled up into a thin smile. “You could say that.” He took Lance’s phone out of his hand as he was changing the song and moved to his contacts, putting his number in before he could object. “Call me or text me if you need anything. Got that?”

Lance nodded. “Sure.”

As it turned out, they didn’t end up going anywhere that Lance had thought they were going to. What they decided to surprise him with was a dance party in the park. Hunk had brought his speaker and asked Lance to do the honors, hooking up his phone to its bluetooth as he turned on another one of his favorite playlists. Dreaming. He lost himself in the joy of all of the uplifting songs, as bittersweet as some of them were. It suited the way that he viewed dreams, with all of their highs and lows, struggles and triumphs. The behind the scenes of achieving them that everyone seemed to neglect. Allura and Romelle twirled each other around, letting Lance join in between them as the sky slowly grew darker and darker. Shiro, Keith, Pidge, and Hunk sat down at a picnic bench, talking about something that Lance couldn’t hear. After about twenty minutes of dancing, he couldn’t take it and marched over to them, hands crossing his chest like a disapproving mother. 

“Uh oh.” Pidge motioned to him as he approached, chuckling as they did. “Looks like Mister Dreamer here isn’t going to let us sit this one out.”

“What kind of a friend would I be if I let you miss out on this?” Lance shouted above the music, twirling around as if to make a point of how fun it was. “Come on! Wake up! Live a little!”

The four of them shook their heads, but decided that it wouldn’t hurt to join him. Keith was the most reluctant to get up but, with one of Lance’s widest grins, he admitted defeat and joined all of them. There was something that was magical about a group of people dancing the night away. No matter who they were, where they were, or what they were, it didn’t matter. Whether they loved or hated, whether they were introverted or extroverted, none of that mattered. They were all just a bunch of idiots, joined by the sound of a thumping beat in their ears, turning it up all night long as they forgot everything about who they were. Lance looked to Keith a few times and saw that even he’d loosened up, singing along softly to himself. He wasn’t quite out of the darkness yet. Daylight was still a long time coming, but with his friends by his side, he knew it would. They were, after all, different colors that brought nothing but laughter and love into his life.

And they’d carry him anywhere that he needed to go.

**Author's Note:**

> Mei's back everyone!
> 
> I know, I just finished A Summer's Lullaby last week but I couldn't wait to post this! It's something that I've had as a concept floating around in my head for a while now and now, I finally have time to write it. This is entirely based off of Walk the Moon's album Talking is Hard, and Keith liking Walk the Moon is a headcanon of mine that I adore and I think in this context it's extremely cute. I would check them out, by the way. I seriously think they're worth it.
> 
> Anyways! Kudos, comments, anything would be appreciated! Thank you so much!


End file.
